Research in basic molecular toxicology continues to underpin key innovations and advances in environmental, pharmaceutical, and industrial sciences by striving to elucidate the cellular, biochemical, and genomic mechanisms of action of toxic substances. The pace of national and international regulation of environmental and pharmaceutical exposures is rapid and methods to assess the risk of substances to human health are continually advancing. For the 2015 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) in Cellular & Molecular Mechanisms of Toxicity (CMMT), we are focusing on Mechanistic Toxicology: The Path Forward, with the goal of incorporating research on the mechanistic basis of disease into risk decision and policymaking. The topics covered are varied and of great appeal to a broad audience of scientists with interest in toxicology. Emerging technologies including computational and 3D modeling as well as in vivo and systems biology approaches to assessing risk to human disease will be highlighted. The microbiome, the inflammasome, epigenetics, carcinogenesis, and stem cells in toxicological research are among the topics that will be highlighted at the conference. The Conference will bring together an interdisciplinary collection of investigators who are at the forefront of their field, and will provide opportunities for junior scientists and graduate and undergraduate students to present their work in poster and platform format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, provides an avenue for scientists from different disciplines to network and promotes trans-disciplinary collaborations in the various research areas represented. For the second time, a Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) will be held in conjunction with this conference. The 2015 GRS on Advanced in Vitro Models in Mechanistic Toxicology will highlight recent advancements in the development of complex in vitro models, and their utility in toxicology research and safety assessment. This is a unique forum for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other scientists with comparable levels of experience and education to network and present and exchange new data and cutting edge ideas.